Tag Archives: Gandhi

You really can’t wait to learn what you need to know now.

23 Sunday Oct 2016

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“As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world as in being able to remake ourselves.” Mahatma Gandhi

One of the fascinating things I have learned in trying to start a personal development training and coaching business is how many such businesses exist, even in my out-of-the-way, not-quite-rural part of the world. I am somewhat under-whelmed in the levels of interest shown in my own services, but if the proliferation of such businesses is a reflection of a need for such help, it must in turn represent some kind of insidious internal disquiet in people about where they are now, compared to where they want to be. They are willing to pay stupid money to some companies (while resisting inexpensive little me) in order to find something they seem unable to discover for themselves.

On the other side of the scales, however, there are those who absolutely dismiss the potential benefits of training, whether it be for them or for the people they manage, work for, or even live with.

I read a great story that might illustrate what I see to be the benefit of self-leadership training. It concerns a middle aged man, shall we say in his early 50s, who was sat at his father’s bedside as the septuagenarian drew close to death. As the old man ebbed away, he managed to impart one more piece of wisdom to his son. He said, “Don’t do it like I did it, son. I was wrong. Live life better than I did.” Then he sighed, and left.

The son was bereft, partly because his father was gone but, as he disclosed to a confidante, also because he realised something else. To that confidante he said, “I am 55 years old, and my father says I’ve being doing it all wrong. I am half way, if not more through life. What the hell can I do with the knowledge that I’ve been doing it wrong?”

The confidante smiled wisely. He said, “How old is your son?”

“Twenty-five, why?”

“What your father learned by his seventies, you learned in your fifties, and you can teach your son in his twenties. In turn, he can teach his children from the day they are born. 70 years’ wisdom available to a child. That is what you can do.”

The purpose of coaching and training is to provide the student, Oh Padawan, with a short cut to the wisdom that they may find for themselves – but now. So they can use it, now. Not when it is too late.

A coach is not there to tell you what to do. S/he is there to help you discover where to look and to open your eyes to alternatives. The coach’s job is to assist you in your relentless search to be better than you already are. On your own terms and in your own circumstances.

Seek it and use it.

My rates are pretty good………………

Presenting Pic

“Shut up – lest thy tongue make ye look a proper nana.”

07 Sunday Aug 2016

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“You don’t understand Gandhi,” Desai responded. “You see, what he thinks is what he feels. What he feels is what he says. What he says is what he does. What Gandhi feels, what he thinks, what he says, and what he does are all the same. He does not need notes.” Mahadev Desai, Gandhi’s assistant.

I’ve mentioned before my publicly stated disdain for the speech patterns which pepper the English language, these days. Not local dialects, odd as they are. No, for me it’s the careless way people follow others’ linguistic idiosyncrasies. Last time I mentioned them it was because of standards. This time it’s because people do this to avoid telling the truth. Not a factual truth – politicians use it to do that, as do lawyers – but their truth.

People use these things to avoid telling us how they truly feel because they don’t want to be judged. This is partly because they are not confident about their ability to properly and reasonably express an opinion that is not the current fashion; and also in the quite reasonable belief that the person they are speaking to wouldn’t even listen if they could express themselves well.

You hear these pauses between question and response. You hear them when the interviewee says, “I mean” before they’ve said anything that needs re-interpretation. You hear it when they say, “like”, “sort of” and other gap words which are interspersed between thoughts because other thoughts are emerging which they have to think about while they’re still thinking about the one they are expressing now.

They are talking too fast, and worry that they may betray themselves in some way.

Gandhi didn’t do that. Gandhi knew what he had to say, and that what he had to say was something he truly believed. There was no deception, no two-facedness about him.

Oh that we allowed other people to be like that, by shutting up and letting them talk. If they have a truly held belief, let’s hear it. If it does not comply with current trends as decided by the media, let’s hear why. You can’t reasonably argue with an opinion you haven’t understood – all you can do is impose yours on someone else. In which case they have as much right to dismiss yours in the same way you just dismissed theirs.

I was recently at a meeting where one party spoke of a technique he used in training courses, and anyone there would have seen me grimace as he did so. I thought that the method used wasn’t in keeping with the tenor of the training that the rest of us were trying to promote. But even as I grimaced I thought to myself, “He said two words – you ‘know’ what that means, but you don’t KNOW what that means. So you can’t challenge its efficacy in ‘our’ programme until then. So shut up.”

I shut up. And didn’t make myself look a fool, as may have happened if I’d challenged him only to discover that what I thought I knew was in fact wrong.

Give other people the same respect, and give yourself the same chance NOT to look stupid.

Argue

And at Number 5….. Science without Humanity

14 Sunday Dec 2014

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“If science becomes all technique and technology, it quickly degenerates into man against humanity.” Stephen R Covey.

Or, as Jeff Goldblum put it in Jurassic Park II, “scientists are so busy asking if they can do something, that they forget to ask if they should.”

The 5th Deadly Sin is ‘Science without Humanity’.

IPads. ‘Nuff said. Attractive and overpriced items that cause otherwise intelligent people to go weak at the knees for an upgrade that looks almost exactly like the one they already have but is 0.0001 grammes lighter or 0.00134 millimetres thinner but, despite all that, costs 50% more. Go figure.

Older readers will recall how information technology was going to create the paper-free office, and we would be able to spend less time doing what needed to be done, creating more freedom. Science has created magnificence in terms of IT even since then.

And we are all suffering from the tyranny that caused.

We measure everything now, because we can. Because we can measure it, we must. And because we have measured it we have discovered umpteen ways to do things wrong, while IT dictates that there is now only one correct way to do things. We are more stressed, and less free than we have ever been. And when that happens, we treat those around us either with impatience (at our own level) or with contempt (if they are ‘below’ us in the hierarchy).

Go on – tell me I’m wrong.

Stick with it – the Second Resolution will help you prevail.

The third Deadly Sin – Knowledge without Character

12 Friday Dec 2014

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“As dangerous as a little knowledge is, even more dangerous is much knowledge without a strong, principled character.” Stephen R Covey

Put another way, too much knowledge in the hands of someone who does not have the maturity to handle it properly presents a danger to others.

The third of Gandhi’s Deadly Sins is “Knowledge without Character”.

In the UK police they have a way of assessing information, called the 5x5x5 system. Part of the decision process is a decision as to whom the information can be safely disseminated. Part of that assessment is based on how secure the information will be when it gets to its ultimate storage facility. In other words, can who gets it – organisation or individual – be trusted to keep it secure?

That applies to criminal intelligence (and anti-terrorist etc.), but what about knowledge in general? Let me use some silly examples.

Would you show a 5-year old how to fire a gun without adding the safety talk? Catch question – even the safety talk wouldn’t make it acceptable to teach an infant how to shoot, especially when they see how little that matters on telly. The man shot at 6pm appears in another programme, safe and well, at 7.

But in this particular context we are talking in terms of values. Would you disclose knowledge that has potential impact, to someone you know is a liar, or full of his/her self-importance (“Guess what I know!”)? Would you show a radical Iranian cleric how to create a nuclear bomb (if you could help it)? Would you tell anyone your credit card PIN?

Of course not. They say ‘with power comes responsibility’, and they are right. Knowledge come with responsibility, too.

But it might be a good idea to ensure that only the responsible are provided with some knowledge! You know them – they have (good) character, are usually competent, and have the self-discipline to treat knowledge appropriately. They are First and Second Resolution compliant.

Are you?